Mile 22 Information

Mile 22 is a 2018 American action thriller film directed by Peter Berg and written by Lea Carpenter, from a story by Carpenter and Graham Roland. The film stars Mark Wahlberg, John Malkovich, Lauren Cohan, Iko Uwais, Ronda Rousey, and follows an elite CIA task force, composed of paramilitary officers from Ground Branch of Special Activities Division, that has to escort a high-priority asset 22 miles to an extraction point while being hunted by terrorists.

The film marks the fourth collaboration between Berg and Wahlberg, following Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon and Patriots Day. The film was released in the United States on August 17, 2018 and received generally unfavorable reviews from critics, who called it "confusing and a chaotic mess," although some praised the performance of Iko Uwais.

Plot

American black operations agent James Silva leads a strike team code-named Overwatch to infiltrate a Russian FSB safe house in the United States. Under the supervision of James Bishop, Overwatch's mission is to locate and destroy shipments of cesium before the highly toxic substance can be weaponized to kill thousands. The team successfully kills the occupants, while Overwatch member Alice Kerr is wounded. One of the boys falls out of an explosion after unsuccessfully trying to save all of the cesium. Silva executes the boy who pleads not to be killed, and everyone escapes.

16 months later, Indonesian police officer Li Noor surrenders himself at the U.S. embassy to negotiate for passage out of the country in exchange for information. Noor is revealed to be Alice's asset and reveals that the disc contains the information regarding the last cesium, but he negotiates for passage out of the country in exchange for the code. The information in the disc is destroying itself and will be rendered useless in a few hours. While Noor is being tested, Alice tries to come to the terms of her family issues. Axel, leading a team from the Indonesian State Intelligence Agency, arrives at the embassy and demands that Noor be handed over. Meanwhile, Noor fends off an assassination attempt by Indonesian agents. Overwatch operative Sam Snow and Alice arrive, shocked at his combat prowess, learning that Noor used to be Indonesian Special Forces.

Silva agrees to take Noor to an airplane, where it is 22 miles away. While driving, Noor reveals his reasons for turning on the Indonesian government: The government had been corrupt and killed his family. While driving, the camera Bishop was looking at blacks out, then comes on again. During the camera blackout, Axel has his men put bombs on the car, making it explode. While Silva's team helps fend off Axel's men, Sam is mortally injured. After defeating most of Axel's men, Silva gives Sam two grenades, and leaves her, letting her suicide-attack the remaining henchmen.

Silva, Noor, Alice, and Douglas enter a restaurant. Silva sees Axel, and walks toward him, even though Bishop tells him not to. Axel tells James to give up Noor, but James refuses, and walks away. He brushes past two girls, and realizes that there is a grenade in the restaurant, and tackles down civilians before it explodes. When the dust clears, Douglas is severely wounded, and James is attacked by the same girls, only Noor to save Silva by killing them. While going to a safehouse, Douglas dies while holding off Axel's men.

While entering the safehouse, Alice is separated and meets a girl in an apartment. Alice and the girl escape harm by using booby-trapped grenades. Meanwhile, Silva and Noor split up, fighting Axel and his henchmen respectively. Silva and Noor meet up again, and meet the girl Alice save. She leads them to Alice, where Alice is losing against a henchman, but Noor kills the henchman by shooting him in the head.

On the way to the air strip, the remaining team members are briefly confronted by Axel. Silva, having had enough, has Overwatch kill Axel by destroying his car with a drone strike. The team barely make it to the airplane, where Noor and Alice board the airplane to meet her family once again. While on the airplane, Bishop notices Noor's heart rate is accelerating and it is revealed that Noor isn't a double agent, but a triple agent working for the Russian government, and the boy Silva killed was the son of a high-ranking official within the Russian government. The official hired Noor to give Alice the wrong information so they would trust him, and just as Alice is realizing this, Overwatch is ambushed, and the entire team is shot. Bishop barely escapes, and rests outside while Alice's fate is left unknown. Silva realizes this too late and tells his experience during a post-mission debriefing. Back at home, Silva puts up Noor's picture, vowing revenge.

Cast

• Mark Wahlberg as James Silva / "child 1"
• Iko Uwais as Li Noor
• John Malkovich as James Bishop / "Mother"
• Lauren Cohan as Alice Kerr / "child 2"
• Ronda Rousey as Sam Snow / "child 3",
• Nikolai Nikolaeff as Alexander
• Carlo Alban as Douglas / "child 4"
• Terry Kinney as Johnny Porter
• Poorna Jagannathan as Ambassador Dorothy Brady
• Sam Medina as Axel
• Alexandra Vino as Sergeant Thomas
• Cedric Gervais as Greg Vickers
• CL as Queen
• Emily Skeggs as M.I.T.
• Peter Berg as Lucas

Production

On March 2, 2015, it was announced that Ronda Rousey and Iko Uwais were set to star in the action-thriller film Mile 22 scripted by Graham Roland, with Peter Berg attached as producer. WME Global was in talks to finance the film. On July 2, 2015, Mark Wahlberg was cast in the film to play the male lead role, while Berg was also confirmed to direct the film for STX Entertainment. Berg would also produce the film along with Wahlberg and Stephen Levinson. On March 28, 2017 Wahlberg and Berg announced that they are moving ahead with Mile 22 as a trilogy of films. On November 7, 2017, Lauren Cohan was cast in the film.

Filming

Principal photography on the film was shot in Atlanta, Georgia in November and December 2017 under the working title Ground Branch, and in Colombia in the capital city Bogot and its surroundings in January and February 2018. On February 5, 2018, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos showed up during filming in one of the locations in Colombia. Director Peter Berg even had President Santos try to shoot one of the action sequences of the film.

Release

The final trailer was released online on July 26, 2018. The film was originally going to be released on August 3, 2018 but was pushed back two weeks to August 17, 2018.

Reception

Box office

In the United States and Canada, Mile 22 was released alongside Crazy Rich Asians and Alpha, and was projected to gross around $17 million from 3,520 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $5.3 million on its first day, including $1 million from Thursday night previews at 2,600 theaters. It went on to debut to $13.6 million, finishing third at the box office.

Critical response

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 20% based on 96 reviews, with an average rating of 3.9/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Mile 22 lets the bullets fly"?and not much else"?in a thrill-deficient action thriller whose title proves sadly fitting for a film that feels close to a marathon endurance test." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 39 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it a 63% positive score.

The performance of Uwais received some praise. Katie Walsh of Los Angeles Times said, "As a performer and fight choreographer, Uwais delivers, with some extremely athletic and imaginative kills, mostly performed while handcuffed. It's also far and away Uwais's best acting performance in a film, and he almost makes Mile 22 worth it." Brian Lowry of CNN stated, "In fact, Uwais' action sequences"?fast paced and electric"?are easily the highlight of a movie otherwise characterized by an abundance of automatic-weapons fire and tedious dialogue during the fleeting gaps between those bursts." David Fear of Rolling Stone gave the film 2 out of 5 stars, criticizing the editing of the fight scenes and stating, "Why go through the trouble of giving Iko Uwais several fight scenes and editing them so that you can barely see the star inflict highly choreographed damage?...Mile 22 can give you chase scenes and bullet-ridden shoot-outs and evil Russians and lengthy diatribes. It can give you something approximating action. What it can't give you is a watchable action movie. That"?s where it truly fails to go the distance."

Future

Mile 22 is intended to be a starting point to a multi-media series.

Web series

After its release, STXsurreal announced that they will produce a short-term live-action series called The Kiev Exchange. The series will follow the CIA's elusive paramilitary force, Ground Branch, as they negotiate a tense and complex hostage exchange in a public square. Berg will return to direct, and it will be written by Umair Aleem, with the film's producers returning to produce the series, which is expected to be released sometime in 2018.

Sequel

There are also plans for a sequel in the early stages of development.